Thomas Browne, "While thou so hotly disclaimest against the Devil, be not guilty of diabolism." Again, no man volunteered his opinions with more freedom on literature, theology, politics, and society; but it is diffi cult to make any discrimination between his opinions and his antipathies, or to discover any law of change which regulated the passage of his antipathies into his loves. His taste was capricious in the extreme. His opinion of any person, or any institution, or any aspiration, varied with the physical variations of his body, and was very different after a debauch from what it was after a ride. No one could infer his judgment of to-morrow from his judgment of to-day. The friend that appeared in the eulogy of one week was likely to point the squib of the next. His consistency in criticism was according to his constancy in hatred. Wordsworth and Southey he always disliked and always abused. As a critic, he has propounded some of the most untenable positions ever uttered by a man of genius. He often mistook his whims and antipathies for laws of taste. When Keats's poems appeared, he entreats Murray to get some one to crush the little mannikin to pieces. After the article in the Quarterly was published, and the death of Keats was supposed to have been accelerated by its brutality, he abuses Murray for killing him, and discovers that there was much merit in the "mannikin's" poetry. It would be easy to multiply examples of this instability and levity of character; but for any reader of his letters and journals, such instances would be needless.

The personal and poetical popularity of Byron is still great. The circulation of his works, even at the present time, exceeds that of Wordsworth, Shelley, Southey, and Coleridge, united. Scott is the only poet, among his

contemporaries, who at all rivals him in the number of his readers. Many of his gloomy creations will long frown defiance upon time. It is certainly a calamity to the world, that a poet possessing such wide influence over the heart should too often have exercised it in culti vating and honoring the heart's base and moody passions; should have robed cin in beauty, and conferred dignity on vice; should have given new allurements to that Dead-sea fruit,

"Which tempts the eye,

But turns to ashes on the lip; "

should have shown such brilliant audacity in assaults on the dearest interests of society; and, by the force of his example, and the splendor of his mind, should be able to perpetuate his errors and his vices through many generations to come. It is of importance, not only to morals, but to taste, that there should be no delusion as to the nature of these perversions of his genius; that his wit should not shield his ribaldry from condemnation, nor his imagination be received in extenuation of his blasphemy. In speaking of Byron, as in speaking of men of meaner minds, things should be called by their right names. The method too apt to be pursued towards him is to gloss over his faults with some smooth sentimentalities about his temptations; or to speak of them with a singular relaxation of the rigidity of moral laws. But it seems to us impossible to defend his character, even as we defend the character of many men of genius whose lives labor under some bad imputations. As soon as sophistry has dextrously disposed of one charge, a thousand others crowd up to be answered. He has written his own condemnation. The faults of his life blaze out

in his verse, and glitter on almost every page of his correspondence. And the most that charity itself can do is to repeat the mournful regret of the good abbot over the sirs of Manfred:

"This should have been a noble creature: he
Hath all the energy which would have made

A goodly frame of glorious elements,

Had they been wisely mingled; as it is,

It is an awful chaos-light and darkness

And mind and dust-and passions and pure thoughts,
Mixed, and contending, without end or order,

All dormant or destructive."

Beiling - Poring

ENGLISH POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.*

THE consideration of the "Poets and Poetry of the Nineteenth Century" involves more than a mere criticism of individual authors. No one can pay much attention to the theme, without being led into inquiries concerning the nature and province of poetry, and the verbal difficulties which perplex the subject of literary ethics. A few observations on some of the sophisms which make poetry synonymous with falsehood, and virtue with propriety, may not be uninteresting to our readers.

The common objection to poetry lies in the word "unreal." In most minds, real life is confounded with actual life. The ideal or the imaginary is deemed to be, at the best, but a beautiful illusion. Reality is affirmed chiefly of those objects directly cognizable by the senses and the understanding. Now, it seems to us, that the mere fact that most minds perceive a higher existence than the life they actually lead, a life more in harmony with moral and natural laws, is an evidence that actual life is a most imperfect embodiment of real life. The difference between duty and conduct, law and

The Poets and Poetry of England in the Nineteenth Century. By Rufus W. Griswold. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 1 vol. 8vo. Second edition. — American Review, July, 1845.

No

its observance, nature and convention, about measures the difference between the real and the actual. sophism can be more monstrous than that which represents actual life as sufficient for the wants and capacities of human nature. In all the great exigencies of exist ence, the actual glides away under our very feet, and the soul falls back instinctively upon what is real and permanent. The code of practical atheism, which condemns poetry as fantastical, strikes at the very root of morals and religion.; and those prudent worldlings who adopt it must have a very dim insight into the ethical significance of those words which represent the world as "living in a vain show." Now, poetry is the protest of genius against the unreality of actual life. It convicts convention of being false to the nature of things; and it does so by perceiving what is real and permanent in man and the universe. It actualizes real life to the imagination, in forms of grandeur and beauty corresponding to the essential truth of things. Literature is the record of man's attempt to make actual to thought a life approaching nearer to reality than the boasted actual life of the world. If the term ideal means something opposed to truth, then it should be abandoned to all the scorn and contempt which falsehood deserves. But the falsehood of life is not in idea so much as in practice; and the sin of the ideal consists, not in being itself a lie, but in giving the lie to commonplace. If the phrase, realizing the ideal, were translated into the phrase, actualizing the real, much ambiguity might be avoided. The inspiration of all the hatred lavished on poetry, by the narrowminded and selfish, is the feeling that poetry convicts them of folly, falsehood, and meanness.

Poetry, then, is, most emphatically, a "substantial